Light the World 2018

Last night we attended the “Light the World” influencer event where the church presented their new Christmas campaign for 2018. It was a great night meeting with lots of social media influencers like Youtubers, bloggers, podcasters, and other social mediaers (I know, I completely made up that last word).

The main theme from last night’s meeting is that the church will be focusing less on “how to serve” and more on “whom to serve”. Who are the individuals that we can serve during the Christmas season. Last year they had the 25 ways in 25 days campaign. While effective and a great experience for many individuals, for others it was a bit overwhelming. So this year, they are switching it up to weekly themes focusing on who should we serve. The Church has created four separate videos that touch each of the themes pictured below.

Light the World

Light Your Community

Light Your Family

Show love to those closest to you

Light Your Faith

Increase your own faith in Jesus Christ.

We will be updating this article as

“Giving Machines” are coming back!

During last year’s campaign, individuals were able to go to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and donate items for others through a vending machine. On the machine it read “What if people could give to someone in need instead of buying something for themselves?” “Freely ye have received, freely give,” a passage from Matthew 10:8, comes on the screen as the brief video concludes.

The vending machine raised over $550,000 in donations last year so they are bringing them back and bringing them to more locations. They will be placing these machines at the following locations:

Invitation Sunday

Another announcement during the event was that the church will be having a special Sacrament Meeting on Sunday, December 23rd. More details about this announcement will be coming to ward councils and ward leaders throughout the church but in essence, Invitation Sunday will be a worldwide effort to invite those not of our faith to a specially prepared sacrament meeting to remember the birth of Jesus Christ. We will update this as we receive more information around this.

We are super excited to be helping out with the #LIGHTtheWORLD campaign and hope that everyone else is just as excited as we are to particpate and really start to think of not only how could we serve but specifically, who should we be serving. Here are some of the photos from last night’s event from other influencers who attended.

About The Author

John Huntinghouse currently runs the LDS S.M.I.L.E. website full-time with his amazing co-founder and wife, Kara and they have three adorable kids. He is an adjunct professor at LDS Business College in the Social Media Marketing Department and he is a lover of all things pasta.